


like a prayer for which no words exist

by TheLillie



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Confessions, Defining the Relationship, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Relationship Negotiation, Road Trips, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), as much as i love the way the romance was presented on tape, i wanted to hear a CONVERSATION gosh DARN IT, so. this is that conversation, talking about feelings!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26464522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLillie/pseuds/TheLillie
Summary: You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you―but you need him to.―“Are. We,” he spoke haltingly, forcing the words out, and paused with a deep breath. “Dating now?”Jon blinked. “Do you want us to be?”“No, don―I mean, not ‘no, I don’t want to be dating,’ but―I need to hear it from you. You know I’ve liked you for ages, and I-I know that you...I just need you to say it.”
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 22
Kudos: 304





	like a prayer for which no words exist

**Author's Note:**

> this richard siken quote: [exists]  
> mlm fic writers: _it's free real estate_

At first the only indication that they’d left the Lonely was the fading of the sound of waves, and the ground gradually beginning to take shape under their feet. The fog was still thick and white, and for a second the silence was scarier than the burrowing repetitive noise of an invisible ocean―but they could see the ground, could see that it was real and rocky and sloping and interspersed with grass and mud. 

And then they heard voices, chattering and complaining and laughing― _ people.  _ A hiking group.  _ Real people. _

Jon thrust his hand into Martin’s and squeezed it tight. “Don’t leave my sight.”

Martin gave a half-chuckle. “Can I? Like, your Sight? Or―”

_ “Please,  _ Martin.”

“I won’t. I wo―” He exhaled and squeezed back. “I’m not going anywhere.”

A shape emerged from the fog, and the voices became louder and clearer. Jon stepped up and laid a hand on the small stone structure―an obelisk about the height of his waist, marking the summit of the mountain they were on. A few meters away was a dozen or so loud and distinctly American twentysomethings in hiking gear and matching backpacks, taking a group photo. 

“So...so, where are we?” Martin asked. “When you said ‘home’ I just...I assumed the Institute, but this…”

“Ben Lomond.” Jon traced his fingertips down the edge of the obelisk. At the bottom of it was a small plaque, but he didn’t need to read it. “Scotland.”

“O...kay. Are we in Scotland on purpose?”

“I think so.” Jon wrinkled his nose, squinting and turning. “I’d say something about trading the grip of the Lonely for the Vast, but if that were the case, we’d probably be on Ben Nevis. It’s the higher peak.”

“Then we’re safe here?”

Jon froze. One of the hikers, a young woman in a dark blue coat and baseball cap, was staring at him―not quite at his face, but definitely at  _ him. _ Did she know him? Was she another avatar? Was she sent by Magnus? By the Web? He tightened his grasp on Martin’s hand and shifted to stand in front of him, a puny but irrepressible attempt to protect him―

The woman noticed him staring back at her and smiled. She pointed at her backpack, decorated with various rainbow-striped buttons, and gave a thumbs-up.

He dropped his shoulders and ran his thumb along Martin’s knuckles. The girl wasn’t a threat. Just a kid freshly out of the closet, doing her best to be proud of herself within the conservative religious community she’d grown up in, simultaneously terrified of and desperate for connection. Nothing supernatural about her trauma, just regular old human deficiencies.

“There’s someplace safer nearby,” he murmured, turning his back to the hikers. “Come on.”

* * *

Acquiring a car at the bottom of the mountain wasn't hard―or at least, it wasn't complicated. They made sure the person they took it from―a Mr. Ed Rosing, Jon said, here meeting up with family―had other options, wouldn't be stranded here. And, perhaps more importantly, wouldn't follow them. The car was small, nondescript, had pretty good mileage on it―they didn't have especially far to drive, but it would be at least a few hours, and the fewer pit stops the better.

Martin took the driver's seat. Jon pointed the way to go and then sat silently in the passenger's, his knees pulled up to his chest and his fingers fidgeting with the ends of his hair. He spent most of the time staring out the window at the passing countryside―though Martin wasn't sure if that was really what he was looking at. Maybe it was, in an attempt to distract himself from whatever other horrible things he might be seeing or thinking about. Or maybe he was intentionally Looking elsewhere.

Well, there was no way else to know than to ask.

“You okay?”

Jon jolted a little at the question, startled. He shifted in his seat and lowered his legs. Martin risked a glance away from the road to look at him. He was smiling.

“I think we're more okay than we've been in a long while,” Jon said.

And Martin couldn't help but smile back.

“You mind if I talk, then? It's just gotten a little...quiet.”

“God, please do.”

So Martin talked, chattered, about the first thing to cross his mind―that maybe it wasn't the best idea for him to be the one driving. Jon knew where they were going, after all, knew the end destination. Martin hadn't really needed to drive since before his mum...well, she didn't matter right now. No, Martin was fine driving. He was good enough at it. He liked it. Besides, most of these roads were pretty straightforward and empty. As long as they didn't get stuck on a narrower forest path trying to get past a tractor or a tourist bus, they'd be alright.

That'd happened to him before, once, on a once-in-a-lifetime attempt to go on holiday when he was a teenager, right before Mum's condition got past the real point of no return. He'd just barely been learning to drive and begged and pleaded for a chance to practice, and when they got sandwiched between the old stone wall and dense trees on one side and a bus near the size of a plane on the other―he, um, he didn't handle it as well as he could've. The repairs to the car ended up costing more than the aborted trip would have. His mother was not happy. They never really got a chance to try a holiday again. Martin didn't deserve one now.

“You deserved better than her,” Jon said with a tick of his tongue. “She didn't deserve you.”

“Nah, I don't think I believe that," Martin shrugged. "I mean...I don't think people have to deserve each other in their lives. You just cross paths with people and do your best, and whatever happens, happens.”

“Well, you deserved to have someone in your life who cared about you as strongly as―as you care about everything. Everyone.” Jon had abandoned his fidgeting to gesture animatedly, genuinely angry on Martin's behalf. “Someone who loves you as much as you love them.”

Martin fell silent and tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his chest pressing with warmth―though he wasn’t sure if that was quite a good or a bad thing. Did Jon mean himself, as this hypothetical someone? Why would he talk about himself like he wasn't there? Whether or not Martin deserved him, or needed to deserve him...he had him, didn't he?

He knew Jon loved him. He Knew that. He'd Seen it, all of it, all at once. All the care and the worry and the missing him, all the butterflies and laughter and companionship, all the devotion and regret, all the complete inability to imagine life without him. He looked at Jon and looked into the sun, and that sunlight burned away the fog like steam before a flamethrower, radiant and cleansing and  _ overwhelming.  _ There was no way he could have processed it. He didn't doubt it, but to look directly at it was just to hurt his eyes.

He glanced over at the passenger seat. Jon had gone right back to quietly staring out the window, absentmindedly twisting a few stray locks of hair into a thin braid.

And he glanced back at the road. Straightforward and easy. Didn’t need too much attention.

And he glanced back at Jon.

“Can we talk?”

Jon pulled his little braid taut. “Haven’t we been? Talking?”

“I mean―have a conversation,” Martin said, flattening his hands against the sides of the steering wheel. “Like, a real, specific conversation.”

“About what?”

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he deflected automatically, his heartbeat rising to cloy up his mouth. “If you want to just talk about something different for a while, something not important―”

Jon’s voice almost bounced with a soft, fond chuckle. “Martin, what do you want to talk about?”

“Us. Ou-o-ou-our...our relationship. Our...I don’t know. Whatever we are now.”

“We’re together.”

“Right, but does that mean―like, are we―are we  _ together  _ together, or―I mean, are we―”

He pursed his lips, forming the shape to make the consonant sound to say the word, and puffed out his cheeks with air, and found himself unable to push the air out. He closed his mouth and then couldn’t open it again.

He couldn’t say it. Insecurity or embarrassment or Loneliness or whatever it was, his mouth stayed clammed shut.

Out the window, the sun was almost ready to set, casting the countryside in a thin sheen of goldenrod. It'd probably be dark before they got to wherever they were going. Martin definitely didn't want to be driving in that.

“I can take the wheel before then,” Jon said.

Martin bit his tongue. “Did I say that out loud?”

“Didn't you?”

“I’m―I don’t. I don’t think I did?”

Jon sank forward in his seat, curling up like a woodlouse, one hand jumping over his mouth. “I-I’m so sorry, Martin, I didn’t mean to, I swear―”

“No, no, it’s―it’s fine.” Martin huffed. “I mean, it’s a little creepy? But it’d probably make things easier, honestly, for this conversation in particular. If you could just read my mind of what I’m trying to say so I don’t have to actually say it out loud.”

“Do…” Jon slowly started to uncurl, but didn’t fully sit up. “Do you want me to?”

Martin set his jaw and closed his fingers. “No. No, I―I need to say it.”

“Do you want to pull over for it, maybe?”

Martin sighed and needlessly hit the turn signal. “Yeah. Probably best.”

The car rolled to a stop beside the road, low-hanging tree branches brushing the roof, and Martin shifted it into park. The nice thing about having important conversations in a car was an easy excuse to avoid eye contact, but he didn’t want that now. He needed to face this head-on. He clicked open his seat belt and turned to look right at Jon, a knee propped up on the console between the seats.

“Are. We,” he spoke haltingly, forcing the words out, and paused with a deep breath. “Dating now?”

Jon blinked. “Do you want us to be?”

“No, don―I mean, not ‘no, I don’t want to be dating,’ but―I need to hear it from you. You know I’ve liked you for ages, and I-I know that you...I just need you to say it.”

“Y...yes,” Jon nodded. “Yes, I’d like that.”

“Okay.” Martin exhaled. “And...what would you like that relationship to entail?”

“I want to be with you,” Jon said. “I want to spend my time with you, talking, learning about you, living, just...existing. I want to be close to you.”

As he talked, his fidgeting drifted toward Martin, fingertips toeing across the console and tapping at the back of Martin’s knuckles. Martin smirked and took the cue. “You wanna hold hands?”

“As much as you’ll let me.” Their fingers intertwined. “I want to make you happy. I want to let you make me happy. I don’t want to have to repress or conceal anything anymore. I just want to be honest about how I feel about you. And...I guess I wouldn’t be opposed t-to things like―pet names or kissing or going on dates, in some hypothetical perfect future where we’re not fugitives―”

“And by ‘wouldn’t be opposed,’ I assume you mean―”

“Yes. I would like those things.”

“Why? Why do you want that?”

Jon cocked his head a little, confused. 

Martin smiled. “How exactly do you feel about me, Jonathan Sims?”

It was a leading question, but he didn’t quite feel bad about it, especially seeing how deep Jon’s cheeks flushed and shoulders peaked. God, he was adorable. Martin tilted forward and lifted Jon’s hand up to his lips, not-quite brushing it with a kiss, grinning sideways.

Jon lifted his other hand and placed it atop Martin’s and looked him right in the eye.

“I feel very much in love with you, Martin Blackwood.”

Martin’s heartbeat suddenly swirled up into a frenzy and his throat went dry, all teasing confidence evaporating.

He’d given up on this fantasy years ago. To see it play out so perfectly in real life, right before his eyes―it almost felt sacrilegious. A blasphemous idol to all the repression to which he’d been devoted for so long. Yet at the same time, Jon’s shy smile was such a holy image in itself; a divine manifestation of his deepest forgotten prayers, shining in a little gray car parked on the side of the Scottish highway, as the last sigh of sunset turned to dusk.

Martin took his thumb and ran it along the the lock of hair hanging over Jon’s forehead, tucking it up safe behind his ear, and let his hand linger there.

“Can I kiss you, then?” he asked.

Jon leaned into the touch and scooted forward on his seat. “Yes, please.”

And so he did, and it wasn’t grand or magical, it was timid and awkward and clumsy―but it was safe, and it was real, and it was  _ him,  _ and so it was perfect.

* * *

That wasn’t the last conversation they had that night, but the rest was mostly empty gab and reminiscence and laughter. Jon took the wheel and drove them deeper into the countryside and pulled up alongside an empty, hidden house just before midnight. They were tired now, not the kind of tired they'd become so accustomed to but the kind of tired they'd been desperately missing. The kind of tired that came after a party, or hours of drinking wine and watching bad movies on the couch, or staying up all night to watch the sun rise. The kind of tired that came after a long journey and the finally arriving at home.

“There's clean clothes in the boot. Mister Rosing brought two suitcases full. And some cash,” Jon said. “God knows if any of it will fit either of us, but we could always go shopping in the morning. I'm sure Daisy's got some money stashed away, too, somewhere in there.”

Martin closed the car door with his hip and stretched his arms up above his head, spine popping. “Honestly, all I care right now is if Daisy's got a bed.”

“One.”

“Excellent. I am about to pass right out.”

Martin circled the front of the car with his hand up on the roof of it, palm up, inviting. Jon slipped his hand into his, and Martin swung him around and twirled him under his arm and tugged him close.

“Wish I wasn’t so knackered,” Martin said with a light kiss to Jon’s cheek. “I’d love to carry you through the door like―like, carry you over the threshold, y’know?”

“We can just lean on each other for now. Carry me around tomorrow.”

“Oh, you can bet I will.”

And he would, and he would, and he would, and he would.

There are some things that after months of separation you need to hear directly from your beloved’s mouth to know they’re true, to know they’re right. But there are other things that you can just see in the dark line of his eyelashes, feel in the way he collapses into your side and shuffles alongside your feet. There are some things you don’t have to talk about before you land on top of the sheets still in your sweaters and jeans, arms and legs a tangle, and sigh an off-key duet into the closed space between your mouths.

Martin fell asleep first, and Jon was grateful. After all this, he at least deserved himself some good rest.


End file.
